Quick Look: Fallout 76

The appeal of the Fallout franchise to me is exploring the wasteland by yourself, this seems to go against everything that stands for a Fallout game.

THAT. FUCKING. GUITAR.

Congratulations to all who purchased this game. You just payed for the ability to be Bethesdas testers in a full priced game.

What if a Bethesda Fallout game DIDN'T start with you exiting a Vault and being on a quest to find someone? That would be wild.

Personally I feel that Fallout has not been as good ever since Bethesda took it from interplay. Fallout 2 was awesome full of choice and interesting characters. Fallout 3 was a disappointment in comparison which largely amounted to a sewer simulator with bad combat and fallout 4 was more of the same. I really enjoyed the VATS and the slow motion cameras which they completely eliminated which was kind of core part of the "fallout 3/4" experience. That was the combat. Without it there isn't much here.

A good example of how different Fallout 2 was is that there was NPCs that would pick pocket you and you could have a primed explosive which they would then wander into a room full of two factions of groups, explode, killing several in the process and then begin a gang war where 2 factions are shooting up a bar and several minutes later you are free to walk around as everything is dead and you did nothing to get any focus on your character. There was a lot of nuance to the combat and this was in the 90s.

They are already walking back and will continue to walk back choices that are supposed to make this game unique such as no text and no talking npcs (super mutants are friendly apparently and are vendors).

I didn't expect any more to be honest. This is Bethesda knowing that their rabid fans don't care if they got a photo of Todd Howard flipping them off as dlc. As a fan of Skyrim mods and being one of those people who runs 200+ mods to get the best looking game possible it really is a shame to see them focusing their efforts (or any efforts) on a sucky product like this, when they could do far better. If they are expecting the players to create content and be part of the "creator club" that is just gonna be a massive shame.

I hope for the sake of the fans though they do add more to the game, because the problem here is this just is not even a beta in comparison to what I imagine their future plans are.

Wait a minute, they put TAPPER in this thing!? I'd buy that as a $5 standalone thing over whatever the Hell this shitty multiplayer game is.

I just want to know what happened in the 72 Fallouts between Fallout 4 and 76.

@sammo21: it worked for destiny.

I haven't watched this yet, but weren't there big headlines about how this game was super broken last week? I didn't realize that it was out this week...

Please enjoy this sample of wood. I want you to hold it in your hands. And enjoy.

Defiance 76

Been enjoying this with my SO. Turns out that a co-op fallout without proper quests ain't too bad!

I'll probably pick this up in a year if it's still around. It doesn't look as bad as the public-at-large painted it to be, but I like a bit more of a story to go with my Fallout experience.

@brad Nice Ronald Jenkees intro

@hammondoftexas: eh, I mean, Bethesda published it, but BGS didn’t make it.

....Jeff doesn't like The Beach Boys? :(

That guitar playing during the beginning was so annoying holy shit.

@hammondoftexas: That was an Obsidian Fallout game.

Baa nananana nanananana Ba nanananan anananan. That guitar is haunting me.

Quick Shoutout to bethesda, you always manage to find ways to make Fallout worse.

Blurgh. I've really enjoyed the Fallout series since its inception, even with the wild evolution of it, but something about this just leaves me cold. Maybe in a year from now when they've shored up some content/features I'll give it a shot.

Installed the game.

pressed START.

Character creator loads up.

Immediately hear someone on open voice chat take a fat hit on his vape and then proceed to talk about his live stream.

5/5 Stars

Why do they keep talking about story? This was never intended to be a fallout game with a story, hence why ppl were saying they made a rust game. This is not about a story its about competitive survival base building.

This game is exactly like rust(btw rust looks better), which is why I'm so confused about west being befuddled by this release. It's not like they never played rust, but I guess they either forgot or didn't play enough to make the connection.

If you realize that this game is a carbon copy of rust then yeah they nailed it, but if you don't I could see how you would think this is garbage.

I can't really blame anyone for complaining about lack of story content in a survival game. Normally the content in survival games is all about your conflict with the other players, building elaborate defensible bases, and the resource risk/reward of raiding someone.

However because this game went for survival-lite, with opt-in PvP and low-risk base building with no meaningful persistence, the player conflict just isn't there. Without that, a survival game has no content, just an empty world of mobs to grind on for no apparent reason.

I dunno, I purchased this to do exactly that and I am enjoying it quite a bit. It has been fun for me to just run around, upgrade my gear, find cool shit and throw on a podcast. No technical issues yet either. I kinda dig the multiplayer aspect and have had a few fun interactions even though I am not doing co-op.

I have enjoyed all Fallout games because of the exploration aspect of it and this is definately my type of game. Played solo for 6 hours so far and loving it.

New Vegas was made by Obsidian not by Bethesda so his point (about Bethesda's repetitiveness) still stands. I'll grant you that you are still looking for someone in that game, but not starting in a vault makes for a pretty different experience overall I think.

That's it? Here's something wilder, how about instead of continuing to do patch jobs on a decrepit engine that's been in used since Morrowind they instead make one from the ground up?

The excuse of game's technology being so complex to the point of bugs being present always being a given continues to ring more and more hollow with each new release. The rest of the video game industry has been slowly catching up to Bethesda in this field of complex open-world games while also being more modern in gameplay and graphics. Bethesda needs to invest for the future or be left behind using the same excuse and dated tech.

Graphics on this sure do look rough coming straight from Red Dead 2!

Man, this is a bummer to see.

@erkel: I've been dying for 2-4 player co op in a Bethesda game since Oblivion. But Not at the expense of all the NPCs and Companions. Without them, the world isn't really worth exploring.

Man, this looks rough as guts.

they really haven't. sure there are open world games that are much prettier but no one is really making big open world games like bethesda with so many gameplay systems interacting with each other. also saying they need a new engine from the ground up is silly. its like telling epic to stop using unreal because its an old engine. there is a lot they could do better but this outrage over forcing them to build a new engine from scratch is silly and not very reasonable.

An open-world Survival Game set in the Fallout universe seems like a FANTASTIC concept.

The execution in the game seems like the developers said, "Yeah, let's do that! Wait, how are we going to do that?"

". . ."

And then, several months later, Fallout 76 was farted out.

TL;DR : It looks and feels like someone else tried to make a Fallout game... and missed all the points.

If this was singleplayer, I'm 100% IN.

MMO-ish? Yea..... F that!

EDIT : Ok... so they killed VATS.

Also Charisma is useless, great!

Go to workbench in busy area, hog it and go AFK..... WOW GG....

No "Take All" option.... WTF is going on?

Maybe my lore is off or wrong but.... shouldn't there be NO supermutants either A) at this time or B) in this place? IIRC the lore from 1 and 2?

It feels, empty.... lack of NPCs cause they feel players fill that gap?

-_-

So Fallout 4?

Texture quality, material quality and lighting on that game looks pretty bad. Maybe I played Fallout 4 with a bunch of mods, so Vanilla Fallout 4 graphics is kinda foreign to me.

Played 50 hours of Fallout 4 before bouncing off hard. I'll try to reinstall that before playing any more Fallout.

I don't really get all the hate for this, or 4. But oh well... I guess I just like bad games.

Sorry about the giant bugs and the headache, @brad.

Bethesda is really shameless in milking it's acquired series. This would have been so much more interesting as a fresh franchise even if it was the same engine. Sure you don't get the brand recognition, but Bethesda is recognizable enough, and they wouldn't have to put up with the baggage of what Fallout is expected to be. Not to mention the damage this is going to do to what is a pretty sterling franchise.

Imagine if this was marketed as an experiment in the Rust style of game as a new IP. People would be so much more forgiving, and they would probably even still make a profit, since they got that sweet main stage E3 marketing. They would have a completely fresh IP with tons of potential, and still have Fallout as a healthy IP. Instead they get a decent profit in the short term, a severely damaged IP and a ton of lost fans.

Thanks for the video guys. This confirms the gut feeling I had that this game was not for me. Its a big bummer for me. I'm a Fallout fan, having played every one of the games and finished most of them. This will be the first one I will pass on, at least for now. Since its an online game they may add to it and perhaps improve it over time. But as it stands now, I've got better games to play right now.

@tuxedocruise: maybe this is a giant whoosh moment for me, but Fallout Four starts off with you leaving the vault and the first npc you see gives you a dialogue options that are pretty much:

Have you seen Shawn?

The bastard took Shawn, have you seen him?

Spouse is dead and they took Shawn, have you seen him?

Shaaaaawwwwnnnnn

I almost quit when the music wouldn't stop, then almost jumped ship after finding out about the Appalachin pronunciachun, but mostly this game seems to be the worst thing ever.

As someone who played Fallout 3, 4 and NV extensively and loved them, I really hope they add to this down the line. It just seems empty and pointless without NPC's and playing with other real humans seems out of place and equally as pointless. I'm going to pull a "No Man's Sky" and wait a while on this one like I did with that game.

@zelyre: I mean to be fair, the baby is more of an animatronic sin against God and nature than a person.